316 BULLETIN OF THE 



probability be too ill scented to suit even the unfastidious taste of an In- 

 dian. As to Mr. Cassin's supposition that the word white in the descrip- 

 tion of the tail should perhaps read Mack, the context wholly forbids its 

 probability. If thus changed the passage referred to would read, " the 

 tail which is rather large and black, is tipped with this dark brown or black ! " 

 which makes simply an absurdity. Besides this, the tail is again men- 

 tioned in the following paragraph as being painted by the Indians, when 

 used in their war standards, etc., " with a zone of red within the brown 

 tips," and afterwards as being " displayed new, clean, and while." As to 

 the information referred to by Mr. Cassin as having been received by him 

 respecting a " king buzzard " existing in Southern Florida, it may be re- 

 marked that this is the name by which the caracara eagle (Polyborus tharus 

 Cassin) is commonly known in Florida, and which is undoubtedly the bird 

 of which, under the name of "king buzzard," Mr. Cassin had heard. 



On the whole, it seems evident that Bartram's account of the Vultur 

 sacra is a confused mixture either of pure fiction and truth, with the former 

 largely in preponderance, or of the characters of several different species. 

 The description would seem to have been mainly drawn from an example 

 of Sarcoramphus papa that he may have somewhere met with, but with 

 which he combined certain features of this or other species which he had 

 only observed at a distance, and that he thus misjudged their exact char- 

 acter (as in respect to the strange external food-pouch) or else added them 

 solely on popular, fabulous rumors. The flights of these birds, which 

 he observed assembling over recently burned districts, I think must refer 

 to the Polyborus tharu*, which is well known to have this habit, while the 

 tail feathers he speaks of as used by the Indians in their councils were 

 more probably either those of the Haliaetus leitcocephalus or Polyborus 

 tharus than of any species of vulture, since a white-tailed American vul- 

 ture, I believe, is a bird thus far unknown. If the "V. sacra," then, is to 

 be regarded as anything else than a myth, it should in all probability be 

 identified with the S. papa, as already stated, and as was done by Bona- 

 parte in his Conspectus. 



FALCONIDJE. 



81 1 Faleo peregrinus LinnA. Duck Hawk. 

 Fako prrrgrinus Gmelin, Syst. Nat. I, 272, 1788. — Wilson, Am. Orn., IX, 



120,1814. — Bonai'AUTE, Joum. Phil. Acad. Nat Sci., 1st Ser., I, 342, 



1824. — Audubon, Orn. Biog., I, 85, 1832, V, 365, pi xvi. — Nuttall, 



Man. Orn., I, 53, 1832. 

 Fako anatum Bonaparte, Gcor. and Comp. List, I, 1838. — Cassin, Illust. 



Birds Cal. ami Texas, 86, 1853. — Cassin, Baud's Birds of N. Am., 7, 1858. 



— Allen, Proc. Essex Inst., IV, 153, 1865. 



